Something else, with VS2012 installs: It appears that it is rather more difficult to get the "Lite" InstallShield to make an installer for services, under VS2012.
It is probably worth following up with Chris Painter's blog (as I recall, he has been very active with WiX for 4+ years, and also used the various InstallShield products extensively), as the following stackoverflow question indicates he has worked out a solution - Visual Studio 2012 .vdproj project migration http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12571268/visual-studio-2012-vdproj-projec t-migration There is a mini-tutorial about services projects under VS2012 + InstallShield Limited Edition in that answer. _____ Ian Thomas Victoria Park, Western Australia From: ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] On Behalf Of Ian Thomas Sent: Friday, October 05, 2012 6:41 PM To: 'ozDotNet' Subject: RE: VS2012 doesn't support setup projects One of the first that I found - courtesy of Chris Oldwood, UK - a PowerShell script: http://www.chrisoldwood.com/win32/vdproj2wix/vdproj2wix.html _____ Ian Thomas Victoria Park, Western Australia From: ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] On Behalf Of Ian Thomas Sent: Friday, October 05, 2012 6:25 PM To: 'ozDotNet' Subject: RE: VS2012 doesn't support setup projects Greg You may not be as badly screwed as you thought. There's always someone wanting to write a conversion program - just spend a few minutes on search + assessment: it may have been done . It seems that there have been people wanting to convert vdproj to WiX since 2007. _____ Ian Thomas Victoria Park, Western Australia From: ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] On Behalf Of Greg Keogh Sent: Friday, October 05, 2012 4:20 PM To: 'ozDotNet' Subject: RE: VS2012 doesn't support setup projects >Basically, your screwed. Technically, it looks like your evaluation is accurate. I was going to try InstallShield Limited, but when it started the 60MB down I cancelled it. I'm sick of their quirky proprietary stuff anyway. Do they still have their own weird scripting language? I tried using VS2012 devenv.exe to build the vdproj file from the command line, but it can't be tricked. I spent 20 minutes reading the WiX documentation and it looks like that's the way out of this dead-end. I will have to convert the vdproj files to WiX XML and replace my Custom Action code with theirs (luckily a lot of it looks like standard extensions to WiX). Sadly I know it will take dozens of man-hours of spare time to get fluent in WiX. Downloading now... The lack of vdproj support really took me by surprise. I just never saw anyone mention this matter anywhere (not that I was looking). I'd be angry about this normally, but I think I'm becoming desensitised, it's hard to not be disappointed these days Greg
